Mikes 74 Elite restoration - 74/090138B

[Mike from Colorado]

Hello Everyone,

I thought I'd put my restoration blog up to record my progress restoring this unique and interesting vehicle.

I found my car in a local junk yard around 2003 or so. I was there on a lunch break getting some parts with a co-worker for his VW.

As we pulled into the junk yard I noticed the car right away. It was in a special side yard with some old Jaguars. It looked like a Ferrari 308 with the hood vent and flip up lights. So I went to check it out and found that it looked like a Gremlin had rear ended a Ferrari and they had become melded together!

It was filled with junk and the wheels were inside the passenger compartment. The glass was all there though, and I'd never seen a car with so much chrome trim on it. I didn't know what it was at the time. I thought maybe it was a Fiat or a Triumph. So when we got back to work I started to guess at different European cars but nothing came up. Then I remembered the Lotus Europa and thought Lotus made some pretty ugly cars in the 70's, maybe its a Lotus! Lowe and behold I'd found a picture of it! A Lotus Elite! The Esprit is one of my all time favorite exotic cars and I was looking for a project car at the time, So I went back on the weekend to look at it again and see if it was for sale. That's when I noticed that it said "lotus elite" right on the windshield!

It looked like a good project (little did I know!). It was very unique, not another Jaguar or Camaro or Mustang, and had all the parts, so I made an offer and they pulled it down off of its pilings (with a forklift and a pipe, which dented the chassis), mounted some old tires on it and put it in the yard.  I was shocked at how low the overall car is, it came up to my hips! Very exotic! It had one windshield wiper! Like a Lamborghini!

I had to call a tow truck driver to pick it up and deliver it to my garage. The driver had to park somewhere level and the car was a little up hill, so they had me get in and steer while some of the guys pushed the car down the hill to the tow truck. I felt like James Bond! Driving my sleek new Lotus! 

I've been working on this car for almost 20 years now and its come a long way. I'm going to add posts to this blog starting from day one and building up to the present. I opted for a complete tear down of the entire car. Every nut, bolt and stitch is being restored or replaced. The vinyl was fragile and the seat cloth just disintegrated when I sat on the seats. Both side windows had been in the down position for about 10 years. The carpet was crunchy and thread bare. The left hand kick panel seems to be the only part that was missing.

Here are a few pics from the day I got it home.

 

 

[ChrisJ]

Really look forward to reading this 

[EXCEL V8]

Subscribed!  Yep - looking forward to seeing 20 years work.  It has the same interior as my resto project - and looks in the same condition!  Is it an automatic?

Pete

[Tony D]

Can't wait to see the progress. My 1974 Elites been on the 'to do' list for 30 plus years, so a little inspiration will go along way.

Tony

[Mike from Colorado]

Mine has the Lotus 5 speed box

[Mike from Colorado]

Stripping it down:

Now that my car was in the garage, I was excited to get started on the restoration. I began by looking for information on the internet and I found out that there is a workshop manual available. I found one on eBay and ordered it right away. It would be coming from England, so would take a while to get here.
Meanwhile, I started to take everything I could off of the car. Some of the trim pieces were laying in the passenger compartment and some in the trunk. I could see the trim clips on the side windows and knew that I could get the trim off with a screwdriver. The trim on the roof was riveted on down the sides and glued to the top with old bitumen which had become crumbly and dry over the years. The B pillar vents are riveted on and glued down on the trailing edge with black RTV style sealer. The A pillar trim and top around the windshield came off in one piece and I was very careful to pop it off without bending or warping it. The lower piece fell off on its own. They have some light hail damage and pitting but still look pretty good. Once the trim was off I could see the rivets holding the interior trim bits on, so I drilled them out and piled all of the trim onto a shelf in the garage. I also removed the windshield trim clips and put them into a baggie.

I took the door cards off and unbolted the front seats and removed those from the car. I took those into the house. My plan was to sew new covers for the seats even though I'd never sewn anything at all before! (That turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. Now I’m thinking about getting aftermarket seats or taking the frames to an upholsterer - yup I also stripped the seats down to the frames) With the seats out I started to tear up the carpet and what was left of the under mat. It came out in handfuls of dust. It was strange how it had been made in several pieces that overlap each other rather than a single molded piece. There were things in the floor that looked like button snaps, the screws for which were so rusted that I could not get them off. I eventually used a cut off wheel and cut them flat. The console was loose and came right out. I took that into the house too.

 Now that the rear seats were clear I decided to sit in them! They were so comfortable and deep! I've never sat in anything like them! Then I noticed a lever in the drivers side pocket so I gave it a pull and the trunk opened! I also found the speakers embedded in the side panel. I thought it was a clever design because it gave the sound wave a longer path to travel likely creating a richer tone. This car is so unique! With its strange glass partition separating the trunk from the cabin!
 
The bolts at the base of the rear seats had been exposed after removing the carpet and I found the bolts at the shoulders so I removed the rear seats. They are also clipped in with these weird "super velcro" snap in tabs. The center piece in between the seats also has these snap in tabs and pulled right up. I remove the kick panels and steering wheel, the center of the wheel came off easily exposing the nut, the steering column cover slid right off.  Again I thought it was pretty neat that the keys went into the dash instead of the side of the column like my other cars. (Saabs are neat too; the keys go into the console). The instrument cluster trim is also held on with the super velcro tabs and the top of the dash is held on with these as well. They broke when I pulled the dash. I undid all of the bolts and screws that I could find and lifted up on the dash. It came right out and was very light! The area behind the dash was a mess of wires and vent hoses hanging down. I'd been disconnecting the wiring hap hazardly as I went along. ( Eventually I pulled the entire wire harness from the body.) I figured that the workshop manual would show me where everything went. I found the heater unit under the dash and removed it. It was surprisingly complex and heavy. I put the steering wheel, dash and the rear seats in the house!
 
There was no head liner and I noticed that someone had written "SABLE" in big letters on the roof. I pulled the rest of the interior roof trim and was surprised yet again to find a roll bar lurking beneath. It had a strange little projector light mounted to the cover and some vent screens. I then removed the trim from the rear interior window and the glass came out with it. The seal had rotted away. I disconnected the trunk release and tried to pull the side bolsters off of the car. I hadn’t disconnected the front seat belts though and the part that covers the B pillar snapped off. I did a better job on the passenger side. This was the most fragile part of the interior. I put the trims on a shelf as the rough carpet like material was turning into dust in my hands and I took the rest into the house!

Next was removing the back hatch and the rest of the glass. I pulled the weather stripping from the back hatch and disconnected the old worn out boot struts then simply undid the bolts on the strut mounts. The hatch lifted off easily and I set it aside. The side windows came off with a small putty knife. The Solbit had dried out and flaked right off, it had very little hold on the windows. The windshield was similar. I found that I could push on it from inside of the car and it was already coming up. It seems that the trim was holding it in for the most part. I went around with my putty knife and then had my wife help me carefully pick the windshield up and...You’ve likely guessed it!...move it into the house! (along with all of the other glass).

Next I removed the doors in one piece. Glass, door beams, window motors and all! I was very impressed by the sound they made when they shut. A very solid and secure thud. No rattling or scraping sounds just a solid "clunk". It reminded me of the sound of shutting the door on a walk in refrigerator, solid and tight. I knew they would be heavy so I supported them with jack stands as I undid the bolts. I slid the bolts out one at a time as I supported the door. After the last bolt was out I tried to pick up the door. It must weigh at least 90 lbs! I found the best I could do was gently lift the door off of the jack stands using the window frames and lower it down onto my feet, then I shuffled them over to the side of the garage where I had made a place for them. I didn’t realize how fragile the window frames actually are until recently when I started the door restoration. I’m so glad that they didn’t snap right off!

I undid the elbows on the fuel tank and slid the filler pipes right out of the side of the car with the fuel caps still on. I pulled the rubber donuts and set these all aside. As I pulled things off I put the nuts bolts and other bits into zip lock bags and labeled them with the assembly that they went with. I wish I had taken pictures of all of this disassembly but I was on a roll and the only camera we had at the time was a film camera. Digital cameras were very expensive and cell phones didn’t have cameras yet. All of the pictures that I have are of large parts or procedures. I've since learned that pictures of where the nuts, bolts and fiddly bits actually WENT are far more important than pictures of the doors, fuel tank or the radiator overflow container! The car was also full of nuts, bolts and washers that were lying about on the floor pan. I gathered these up and organized them by size and put them into baggies. I placed all of the baggies into plastic bins for restoration as I re-assembled things.
 
I included a few pics below. They are pretty representative of the condition of the nuts and bolts in the car as a whole. Most are restorable and others are completely rusted beyond use. The bins show my bolt baggies, The teal bin is nuts and bolts found in the car. I have no idea where they go, fifty small bags. The pink bin is unfinished bits and the bin with turn signal stalks are fully restored bits. The screens are from the back of the roll bar if someone is missing these and wondered what they looked like. They appear to draw air from the outside B pillar covers through the roll bar trim and into the cabin. Neat!

After all of this, I started sanding the body! There were cracks and stars in the paint so I sanded them as deep as could, through the paint and some grey primer, then some yellow primer, down to a white layer which was hard as a rock! I had no idea what gel coat was and if the white had been softer I would have sanded that off as well. In two places near the windshield I did get down to the bare fiberglass because the cracks ran so deep. Thankfully it was just the gelcoat that cracked. The body looks good overall, but the front passenger wheel arch has a crack, as though it’s separating along the seam where the body halves are joined. I'll be posting questions on that issue much later on as I approach paint time!

The next post will be about taking the body off, removing the engine and transmission from the chassis and sandblasting the chassis!

 

 

[ChrisJ]

So that was the morning's work, what did you do in the afternoon

[Mike from Colorado]

On 17/07/2022 at 08:21, ChrisJ said:

So that was the morning's work, what did you do in the afternoon

 

[Mike from Colorado]

Chassis removal - or body removal depending on how you look at it.

So after stripping and sanding the body, which actually took a few weekends to complete, I decided to remove the bumpers before undoing the bolts for the chassis. I removed the hood, the head light pods and front grill and then undid the bolts for the bumper, it came out easily but the backing separated and I saw that they are filled with foam and the anchors are sort of glued in. It seemed a little dodgy. I went to the rear of the car and found the bolts in the boot in the expected location. The bolts on the inside portion came out with no issues but the left and right outer most bolts made a grinding squeaky sound on turning them and just spun in place. The anchors had stripped in the foam. I couldn't get the rear bumper off but it wasn't a priority.

I put the car on jack stands, making sure to support the chassis and not the body; I didn’t need the chassis falling on me as I undid the bolts! I got under the car and removed the bolts for the sway bar and in the engine bay for the shock towers. I removed the bolts along the body and then the rear cross member. When I was done I took the wheels off of the car and set the whole thing down on some dollies that I had made from some round plywood and caster wheels from Home Depot. I can push the car around in any direction with these.

This time I put two jacks under the body, one on each side, just behind the front wheel arches with some sections of 2x4 between the jacks and the body for some support. I pumped one jack up a few inches then ran around to the other side to pump the other jack. The body started to lift from the chassis! I did this back and forth until the jacks had maxed out. The body had lifted enough for me to slide an 8 foot 2x4 across the chassis then I lowered the jacks and moved them to the rear. I used the same technique setting the jacks just in front of the rear wheel arches and started pumping the jacks but this time the body didn’t lift up! I could swear I took all of the bolts out so I started to push on the car body thinking it was snagged on something, I tried to pry up on the front 2x4 to see if it would pop off of whatever it had caught on. It seemed pretty well attached to whatever it was. I finally had the workshop manual so I looked at the diagram and found, like alot of other folks, that the seatbelt bolts were still attached! I lowered the car down again and took the seat belts out and jacked the rear up, it came up with ease and I stuck another 8 foot 2x4 in the gap.

Now that the body was sitting on the 2x4's I got a ladder and screwed some large eyebolts into the studs in the ceiling, one above each wheel arch. Then I drilled some holes into the 2x4's, which are standing up instead of laying flat, for more strength. I screwed some eye bolts into them as well. I attached some 2 inch pulleys to the bolts in the ceiling and got some 100ft rope and cut it into 25ft sections. I tied the rope to the eyebolts in the 2x4's and took it through the pulleys above.

Then I started lifting! The body is really heavy! I found that pulling down on the rope was difficult, so I installed another eyebolt on the 2x4 and ran the rope through it so that I could pull up which I found to be alot easier. I pulled one side up a bit and tied the rope off, then ran to the other side and lifted that side as much as I could, then to the back of the car to do the same thing. I ran around lifting little by little until the body was just off of the chassis and clear of the engine and the shifter.

Then I tied the ropes off and since the chassis was sitting on the dollies, I slid the chassis, engine, transmission, diff and all, off to the side!

It was out!

 

[Mike from Colorado]

Chassis restoration:

After getting the chassis out from under the car I set about removing the engine, transmission and all of the running gear. I undid all of the bolts around the transmission and supported it with a block of wood. Then I undid the motor mounts and got the engine hooked up to my hoist. It was alot easier pulling it out this way than pulling it out through the engine bay!
The transmission mount was rotted in half, so I picked the transmission up, slid it off of the drive shaft and just set it aside.

I'm pretty sure that my car has the non-galvanized chassis. I read that the rear cross member is subject to rot due to the carpet padding foam that they used for support. I scraped this off and found that, like the rest of the car, it had mostly surface rust and that the cross member was solid!

Some weeks or months later, I cleared the garage out and removed the running gear from the car. I put the big parts into some giant plastic bins and put the nuts and bolts into baggies labeled by assembly and by side. I took off the exhaust and noticed that it rattled when I shook it. I figured that the mufflers had rotted out and were falling apart, so I dumped it out. It was full of dog food! Some little critter had made a home there.

Fast forward to another weekend. I picked up a set of saw horses and some 6 mil plastic sheeting from the home improvement store. I had my wife help me lift the empty chassis up on to the saw horses, and then I got a ladder and took my sheeting and some duct tape and made a curtain around the chassis. I taped it off on the floor and left some gaps to allow air to escape. I took a scraper, a wire brush and some degreaser and went around the chassis getting lose debris and oil off. Alot of the original paint flaked right off revealing good solid metal.

The next weekend I got a respirator, safety glasses, some gloves and a bucket for my aluminum oxide blasting sand. My wife wears hoodies so I took one from her and put it on after donning my gear. I cinched it up tight around my face. I also took a scarf and wrapped it around my respirator for some extra filtering. I stuck the feed tube from my blasting gun into the sand bucket and started blasting away! It worked very well and rather quickly. When my bucket was empty I would sweep up all the sand, put it back in the bucket and start blasting away again. I blasted it section by section over the winter and eventually got the whole chassis sanded.

As spring returned and the weather started to warm up, I decided that I would paint the chassis in light grey. I researched different paints online and found the POR-15 product. I thought it would be a good idea to paint it with a rust preventative paint since the chassis isn’t galvanized. I got 2 quarts of the POR-15 2k paint and some xylene and I ordered an HVLP paint gun. I wiped the whole chassis down with xylene before painting. The 2k paint is nice because it doesn’t catalyze until the two parts are mixed so I was able to take my time painting the chassis, mixing only enough paint for one section at a time. One quart for the top and one for the bottom. When it was finished people would ask me what color I was going to paint it now that I've got it primered!

After all of this, I decided that I needed a house with a bigger garage. So we moved!

Next I take the dents out of the front cross member

 

 

 

[deanb]

Love this!  Thanks for posting 🙂👍

[exeterjeep]

8 hours ago, Mike from Colorado said:

I read that the rear cross member is subject to rot due to the carpet padding foam that they used for support

On my 501 this rusted away with a hole on either side - and that was back in the early / mid 1980's. 

Great to see another elite being restored - they are brilliant looking cars.

[Mike from Colorado]

Thank you all for taking the time to read my posts! Looking at all of these restorations has been inspiring!

Repairing the dented cross member:

After getting the chassis painted I decided to remove the dents from the front cross member.

I flipped the chassis over again and attempted to pull the dent out by inserting a large screwdriver into the hole and prying up. This brought the dent up a little bit, but as I worked my way around the hole I only ended up making a big cone. The screwdriver didn’t have the reach I needed either. I have a body alignment tool that has a hook on the end so I tried that and although it had a little more reach it still didn’t work very well. As I pried up it also pushed back down on the opposite side of the hole so I was getting nowhere.

I looked into dent removal online and found that they weld copper studs and loops onto the dent and use a slide hammer or hydraulic puller to pull the dent out. I didn’t have any of these copper bits or the tools to pull with. I do have a body alignment spike, small welder and some washers though!

I put some wet towels over the front of the chassis and the side rails as well as the bottoms of the front uprights.

I welded a 1"OD x 3/4"ID washer on to the deepest part of the dent. I slid my pry bar through the washer and rested the end on a block of wood to pry against. I pried up and the dent came up as well! I grabbed my pliers and broke the washer off and re-welded it to another low area and repeated the process. This was working very well! After several dozen attempts, and many washers, I had most of the deep dents out and revealed tons of small dents.

I used the same process on the small dents and pulled them up. An interesting phenomenon happened. As the small dents became flush, the washer would pop off on its own! So I ended up flinging hot washers all around the garage.

This process left bits of welded metal on the cross member that needed to be ground down. I realized that since I have to grind these flat, I could fill in some of the small deep gouges and sharp dents using the welder.

After a few nights of pulling dents and filling gouges I decided that I was satisfied and ground the whole the whole thing flat with my angle grinder and a sanding disk. It came out pretty good!

Of course this ruined the paint job. I ordered a quart of rust preventative paint in grey and found that it didn’t match the 2k grey that I had used on the rest of the chassis. Since everyone that had seen the chassis asked me what color it was going to be; because to them it just looked like primer... (I've never seen glossy primer! They just didn’t understand my artistic vision I guess.)

I decided to paint it silver! So I got 2 quarts of POR-15 silver top coat and painted 3 coats on the bottom and 3 on the top. It dries to a flat silver and looks like bare metal.

Beautiful!

 

Next I finish the running gear

[Mike from Colorado]

I dug into my bins and got my all of my running gear out for refinishing

As you’ll see it’s all pretty rusty and all of the bushings need to be replaced. I started with the front suspension.

I disassembled everything down to its components and put them in the sand blaster. I spent many weeks sand blasting the hubs, the control arms pinion arms, brake mounts, sway bar shackles and the wishbones. I put the front sway bar into a vise and gave it a good old fashioned "shoes shine" style sanding.

I didn’t like the idea of the front trunnions so I did some research and learned that the uprights are from a Triumph Vitesse or possibly a GT6.

I came across these uprights from Canley Classics for the Caterham that have a ball joint. I like this idea better but the ball joint is pretty exposed and doesn’t look replaceable. I ordered them anyway and set them aside.

My lower control arms were heavily rusted and were actually bent as if someone had driven over a parking block or a large stone. One of the bushing cups for the sway bar had rusted right off.

I took to eBay and I actually found a pair of lower control arms with old rotted bushings intact. I ordered them right away. Of course they came from the UK so I paid more to ship them than they cost.

The old bushings had to come out. I pressed the crush tubes out but I couldn’t get the rubber part out. I should have just left them in but I’m a perfectionist - a horrible trait to have - I looked online and found that some people burn them out using a torch and others cut them out.

I burned out the centers enough to put a hack saw blade through the middle and cut and chiseled the rest out.

This left the metal rings still inside the control arm. I couldn’t press the rings out either so I got the hack saw blade out again and some leather gloves to hold the blade, and sawed through the rings so that they could be removed. This took ages!

After this they went into the sand blaster. They appeared to me like they were stainless. They were really pitted, but if not I might have just polished them up!

After all of this prep work I purchased some POR-15 Rust Preventative paint in gloss black and painted the lower control arms. They came out great as you can see!

I like the look of cadmium plate but it’s toxic and not available anymore. I painted the wishbones in a "hot" gold that I later changed to a "soft gold". The uprights appear to be bare metal so I cleaned them in solvent and painted them silver.

I used Rustoleum for these. It seems kind of soft, I hope it holds up. It’s not a daily driver or anything.

The next order of business was new bushings and the upper ball joint. I ordered these from SJsportscars and got fancy purple sway bar bushings and trailing arm bushings in red! All in polyurethane.

The trailing arm mount was disassembled and sand blasted. Then I used a Caswell zinc plating kit and plated the hardware. They came out like brand new! I'll have another post on plating the nuts and bolts.

I painted the hubs, pinion arms, upper ball joint, brake mount etc. in gloss black as well. I also polished the lug nuts.

For the rear suspension I pressed the drive shaft out of the hubs and as I did so, the bearings came out in pieces. I saved them in a baggy and put them in a bin. At the time I didn’t know that they were impossible to get.  I suspect that this is one of the reasons that this car was junked.

(It also has a shifter problem which I’ll get to in another post)

I pressed the U-joints out and de-greased the hub and axles. I taped off the splines on the axle stub and then they were off to the sand blaster to be de-rusted. I de-greased the hub carriers and gave them a light sand blasting as well. I painted the axle set, hubs and flanges black and the hub carriers in silver. I picked up some Spicer U-Joints model P051 They fit perfectly and have a grease fitting as well.

 Coming together!

Next Springs, Dampers and steering rack. ( I know, the tie rod ends are upside down )

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Mike from Colorado
removed extra image

[EXCEL V8]

I'm not mad about trunnions either Mike so I modified my lower arms to take spherical bearings to use the trunnionless uprights as well (I didn't like the Canley bot-on set-up):

 

 

 

Enjoying following your fabulous work!

 

Pete

[Frickin_idiot]

You are doing a great job!

[soldave]

Brilliant build and progress. Huge kudos to you for the attention to detail and taking the time and effort to make everything just right